Is it valid to apply the Gini coefficient math to dating as they do?
> On a list of 149 countries’ Gini indices provided by the CIA World Factbook, this would place the female dating economy as 75th most unequal (average—think Western Europe) and the male dating economy as the 8th most unequal (kleptocracy, apartheid, perpetual civil war—think South Africa).
This really does poke a few holes in the equity of outcomes view. Interestingly it also pokes a few holes in the unrestrained capitalism view. As we've seen society in the past restrain individuals and produce more equitable outcomes.
We've seen via enforced monogamy a society with more equitable outcomes. Was it better or worse?
This is nonsense for many reasons, but I'll just remind everyone for starters that it does no good to hire someone to go get layed so you can capture a percentage of the sexual experience they create.
I wonder what studies there are on what features women find attractive in order of priority. How many of those could men generally do something about?
How easy/hard would it be for a male generally to increase their attractiveness through effort - sufficient enough to compete with the existing top 20%? Or is that not possible - due to genetic fitness (or maybe environmental vars only marginally in their control - diet as children etc)?
Assuming that men COULD increase their attractiveness to compete with the EXISTING top 20% of men - would the size of the top cohort that 80% of women compete for increase? Or not? I.e. are women looking for a particular level of minimum quality that won't change much over time? Or if that 20% figure remains constant - that their desire in this respect is a relative value; relative to the overall quality of mate choices available currently.
Getting down to the brass tax questions I'm building too.
Does that 80/20 figure of women chasing men amount to a cultural fact that men are lazy in terms of trying to appear attractive? Do men find more women attractive - not because they are less choosy, but because women put more effort into being attractive? Or are women just choosy and men easy?
What drives female choosiness? If that 20% figure stays constant no matter what men do - then one explanation might be that mate choice for women is highly status driven. But something must mitigate it generally right? Outside of the tinder abstraction - women settle for less than the top 20% all the time. Don't they?
Intuitively it seems that it should be possible. Physical fitness, confidence, kindness, empathy, social standing, even appearance: these things can all to a large extent be improved through effort.
Facial attractiveness seems extremely important to both genders, and is rather difficult and expensive to change. But certainly someone with a merely average face could achieve overall attractiveness by pumping enough points into the above areas.
It seems like the study discussed skewed in terms of the dataset was sites that are picture-based primarily and thus generally perceived as geared towards hook-ups. This could also be interpreted that guys are more open to casual sex with whomever and women tend to be already compromising by agreeing to casual sex therefore looking for a higher threshold of attractiveness?
That doesn't answer if improving attractiveness increase the 20% to go beyond 20%, or if it just change who is in the 20%.
Ie, by improving physical fitness, confidence, kindness, empathy, social standing, and appearance, are you simply improving your relative status in the dating pool.
> If that 20% figure stays constant no matter what men do - then one explanation might be that mate choice for women is highly status driven.
Pretty easy to test. Look if the data is different based on time period or nationality. The ability to spend time and effort on being attractive is not a natural constant, so it should fluctuate depending food availability, wars, and so on.
Women are attracted (on a visceral level) to a man's genetics, most of which you can't change. In varying order of importance:
1. Height
2. Facial traits that demonstrate high testosterone pre-natally and during adolescence: high-set cheekbones, a chiseled jawline, a proeminent chin, forward growth of the maxilla, positive or neutral canthal tilt, having a full head of hear and not being bald
3. Broad shoulders (swimmer physique)
Interesting, though I do think the author is somewhat callous. There is something distinctly human, I think, about love and pair bonding and both the idea of "love at first sight" as well as the tale of "Beauty and the Beast". In my experience, there are certain women of varying attractiveness levels who seem to like me just for being me, rather than because I possess an extraordinary degree of some single quality like strength or intelligence (which would assume we strictly follow polygyny).
Of course, the desire for polygyny exists, but to assume that that is all there is to "mating" is somewhat Hobbesian. Then again, the inequality w/r/t men is somewhat inherent across time keeping in mind the "average man" gives the life vests to women & children, charges across the front into the enemy's machine gun nest, and toils the fields for their master. Hell, if you lost the war you became a eunuch and lived the rest of your life a slave. So I don't think this inequality is anything new.
Ultimately, though perhaps there's still lots of inequality in the "dating economy", I think it's better in our society than it has ever been. Most anyone can work to get in shape, or pursue their hobbies. There's no caste structure, and though some people have it easier than others (resources from parents or genetics), it's more than possible with dedicated effort to change oneself because that seems to be something people struggle hard to do. Additionally, there's more variety in our culture than ever before. Women and men can be attractive for different reasons, and so there's many groups people can fall into. There's intelligent people, athletic people, social people, creative people, spontaneous people, mysterious people, etc. Instead of there just being one group -- royalty ala Madame Bovary -- there are many different groups you can choose to be in which nets you much more opportunity than ever before.
I'm glad I was able to think through this and come out of it with an honest, optimistic take; it's too easy -- at least for me -- to be nihilistic when you see an article like this
Its worth noting that this is attractiveness of a photo on an online dating site.
A lot of men are not photogenic but are perfectly handsome in reality.
I think the solution is simply to ban online dating apps and websites. They do more harm than good. Dating worked perfectly fine - better even - before them. At least if you meet someone in real-life first, you can smell them!
Emotional subject and hence a comment trap so I won’t engage except to say that this is not a problem “the society” needs to deal with.
Let people do whatever they please, as long as it doesn’t violate another person’s property rights. There’s nothing to fix and no problem that needs solving.
Stop telling people what to do and explaining they have a problem. If there’s anything more depressing than being rejected or deprived it’s listening to these “experts” telling people what their problem is and what to do about it.
Recently started using dating apps and also read the book 'Dataclysm', so this is a timely article. I can confirm it's all true - men are treated like second class citizens on these apps because that's just the way it is. Very average or even ugly looking women will get hundreds of messages, some of them from very attractive men, no matter what they do, so they don't do much of anything. A man with no bio, only one so-so picture, and who doesn't respond in a timely manner has literally zero chance but I see girls act that way all the time. Very commonly you see girls with bios that are nothing but a list of requirements - "6 foot, works out, nice, is funny, no hookups, follow me on Instagram if you want to talk."
I don't think there's anything we can or should do to change but it is a raw deal for guys. Also note that apps like Tinder seem very artificial and surreal (e.g. like they don't actually matter) and I do believe this skews behavior.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 41.6 ms ] thread> On a list of 149 countries’ Gini indices provided by the CIA World Factbook, this would place the female dating economy as 75th most unequal (average—think Western Europe) and the male dating economy as the 8th most unequal (kleptocracy, apartheid, perpetual civil war—think South Africa).
We've seen via enforced monogamy a society with more equitable outcomes. Was it better or worse?
We better get sex robots quick or who knows what’s going to happen when more guys are more frustrated.
Maybe whatever calculations they're doing should take age into account?
How easy/hard would it be for a male generally to increase their attractiveness through effort - sufficient enough to compete with the existing top 20%? Or is that not possible - due to genetic fitness (or maybe environmental vars only marginally in their control - diet as children etc)?
Assuming that men COULD increase their attractiveness to compete with the EXISTING top 20% of men - would the size of the top cohort that 80% of women compete for increase? Or not? I.e. are women looking for a particular level of minimum quality that won't change much over time? Or if that 20% figure remains constant - that their desire in this respect is a relative value; relative to the overall quality of mate choices available currently.
Getting down to the brass tax questions I'm building too.
Does that 80/20 figure of women chasing men amount to a cultural fact that men are lazy in terms of trying to appear attractive? Do men find more women attractive - not because they are less choosy, but because women put more effort into being attractive? Or are women just choosy and men easy?
What drives female choosiness? If that 20% figure stays constant no matter what men do - then one explanation might be that mate choice for women is highly status driven. But something must mitigate it generally right? Outside of the tinder abstraction - women settle for less than the top 20% all the time. Don't they?
Facial attractiveness seems extremely important to both genders, and is rather difficult and expensive to change. But certainly someone with a merely average face could achieve overall attractiveness by pumping enough points into the above areas.
But you'd need long term cross-cultural data to confirm.
Ie, by improving physical fitness, confidence, kindness, empathy, social standing, and appearance, are you simply improving your relative status in the dating pool.
Pretty easy to test. Look if the data is different based on time period or nationality. The ability to spend time and effort on being attractive is not a natural constant, so it should fluctuate depending food availability, wars, and so on.
Of course, the desire for polygyny exists, but to assume that that is all there is to "mating" is somewhat Hobbesian. Then again, the inequality w/r/t men is somewhat inherent across time keeping in mind the "average man" gives the life vests to women & children, charges across the front into the enemy's machine gun nest, and toils the fields for their master. Hell, if you lost the war you became a eunuch and lived the rest of your life a slave. So I don't think this inequality is anything new.
Ultimately, though perhaps there's still lots of inequality in the "dating economy", I think it's better in our society than it has ever been. Most anyone can work to get in shape, or pursue their hobbies. There's no caste structure, and though some people have it easier than others (resources from parents or genetics), it's more than possible with dedicated effort to change oneself because that seems to be something people struggle hard to do. Additionally, there's more variety in our culture than ever before. Women and men can be attractive for different reasons, and so there's many groups people can fall into. There's intelligent people, athletic people, social people, creative people, spontaneous people, mysterious people, etc. Instead of there just being one group -- royalty ala Madame Bovary -- there are many different groups you can choose to be in which nets you much more opportunity than ever before.
I'm glad I was able to think through this and come out of it with an honest, optimistic take; it's too easy -- at least for me -- to be nihilistic when you see an article like this
A lot of men are not photogenic but are perfectly handsome in reality.
I think the solution is simply to ban online dating apps and websites. They do more harm than good. Dating worked perfectly fine - better even - before them. At least if you meet someone in real-life first, you can smell them!
https://www.livescience.com/28812-women-prefer-smell-of-manl...
Let people do whatever they please, as long as it doesn’t violate another person’s property rights. There’s nothing to fix and no problem that needs solving.
Stop telling people what to do and explaining they have a problem. If there’s anything more depressing than being rejected or deprived it’s listening to these “experts” telling people what their problem is and what to do about it.
I don't think there's anything we can or should do to change but it is a raw deal for guys. Also note that apps like Tinder seem very artificial and surreal (e.g. like they don't actually matter) and I do believe this skews behavior.